Long Prairie Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Long Prairie Cemetery, out here in Navarro County. Now, it starts, as so many good Texas stories do, with a land deal. The year is 1870, and a man named Lawrence S.

Taylor sells five acres. Five acres, that's it. He sells them for school and church purposes, to three trustees of the Long Prairie School District: Nelson Owen, J.T.

Selman, and W.B. Gage. Five acres to hold a whole community's hopes.

A school goes up. A Methodist church goes up right alongside it. And the community, being the practical, neighborly sort that communities tend to be, starts using the land for something else too.

A cemetery. One piece of ground doing three kinds of work at once. That's Texas efficiency for you.

Now, the first burial recorded at this graveyard is that of Sallie K. Burt, a child, who died in 1872. That's the first name in the ground here.

A child's name. And that detail sits quiet and heavy, the way a cemetery will remind you right from the start what it actually is. The place also goes by another name, Alligator Cemetery, and the marker doesn't explain that name, so neither will I.

Some names you just let stand. The decades roll on. Many of the graves here are marked with fraternal organization symbols.

Several belong to veterans who fought in conflicts dating back to the Civil War. Generation after generation of Long Prairie residents, their families, their friends, their neighbors. By 1949, the Long Prairie School District had consolidated into the Kerens Independent School District.

Around that same time, the Long Prairie Methodist Church merged into the Kerens Methodist Church. Both institutions sold their respective land at this site to the Long Prairie Cemetery Association. The school moved on.

The church moved on. But the cemetery stayed, holding every name it had ever been given. And that's the thing about a place like this.

The school and the church, they served the living and eventually outgrew the land. The cemetery never outgrows anything. It just keeps the record, name by name, from settlement through hardship and success, all the way down to right now, when you're standing on a Texas road and listening to the story of five acres that Lawrence S.

Taylor sold one hundred and fifty-some years ago.

What the marker says

In 1870, Lawrence S. Taylor sold five acres of land for school and church purposes to Nelson Owen, J.T. Selman and W.B. Gage, trustees of the Long Prairie School District. The Long Prairie School and the Long Prairie Methodist Church shared the site, which the community also used as a cemetery. The school district consolidated into the Kerens Independent School District in 1949. Around that same time, the church merged into the Kerens Methodist Church, and the school district and the church sold their respective land at this site to the Long Prairie Cemetery Association. The first burial at the graveyard, which is also known as Alligator Cemetery, is that of Sallie K. Burt, a child who died in 1872. Many graves are marked with fraternal organization symbols, and several belong to veterans who fought in conflicts dating back to the Civil War. The names of these Long Prairie residents and their families, friends and neighbors serve as reminders of the community's history, from settlement through hardships and success. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2003